Intellectual Property – What is the difference between formal and informal intellectual property?

Intangible value comes generally in two categories, formal intellectual property (“formal IP”) like copyrights, trademarks and patents and informal intellectual property (“informal IP”) which includes a company’s workforce, supplier and customer relationships, technology, processes, and data. These informal IP assets commonly referred to as a company’s know-how, are intangible assets of the business and are most often seen in the goodwill of a company’s enterprise value. Leeward’s S2S investment structure is designed to monetize the informal IP of a business, more specifically the know-how built into a company’s technology and data, which usually sits in a data-center or in the cloud.